Messages such as E-mail, pager alerts, instant messages, wireless messages and the like may be used to provide information to one or more recipients. When messages are used for marketing purposes, two types of information may be sent.
The first type of information is information that is requested by the intended recipient. For example, a target party may wish to receive a daily roundup of news information related to stocks in his or her portfolio and other stocks of interest. The target may log on to a web site and select the option to receive information related to stocks in the target's portfolio, and may define lists of other securities about which the target wishes to receive information. An automated system may collect this information from various sources and provide it to the target on a daily basis in one or more e-mail messages. People tend to pay particular attention to this type of information because they know it will be relevant to their interests, since they select the types of information they will receive.
Another type of information sent via messages is information that is not requested by the recipient. Such information currently includes information many users do not feel is relevant to their interests: get-rich-quick schemes, advertisements for penny stocks, and advertisements for less-than-tasteful web sites. Recipients of such messages tend to ignore the message because most of the information thus received is not relevant to the user's interests. Even information that the user may find highly relevant is ignored because the user tends to assume that virtually any information that is not requested by the recipient will be similar to other such messages and will not be relevant to the user's interests. Thus, much non-requested information that a party may find relevant to his or her interests is not communicated because the originator of the information knows the information will largely be ignored by the recipients of the information.
Although it would be possible to include non-requested information with requested information, if the non-requested information has so little relevance to the recipient, there is a danger that the recipient finds the sum of the information less relevant and stops viewing all of it or rescinds the request.
What is needed is a system and method that can draw a user's attention to non-requested information that may be relevant to the user's interests as determined by certain characteristics of the user.